Stylos is the blog of Jeff Riddle, a Reformed Baptist Pastor in North Garden, Virginia. The title "Stylos" is the Greek word for pillar. In 1 Timothy 3:15 Paul urges his readers to consider "how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar (stylos) and ground of the truth."

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Image: Crossway has used a "bandwagon" marketing strategy to promote the ESV among Calvinistic evangelicals.

Image: Here is a parody that appeared on the Confessional Bibliology FB group [Note: I don't do FB, but I have my sources!]. Some other parodies are posted below.

I just posted WM # 58 Reaction: ESV (2016) “Permanent Text Edition” Fail. This episode offers some reaction to and
analysis of Crossway’s announcement yesterday (9.28.16) of the reversal of its
summer 2016 decision to establish a “permanent text” edition of the ESV. In
that announcement, Crossway President and CEO Lane Dennis stated: “We have become convinced that this decision
was a mistake … We apologize for this and for any concern this has caused for
readers of the ESV, and we want to explain what we now believe to be the way
forward. Our desire, above all, is to do
what is right before the Lord.”

Oddly enough, Crossway had apparently made the decision to
establish the “permanent text” of the ESV in emulation of the stability of the
KJV (since the 1769 Blayney edition).
They apparently received some heavy backlash for this decision from their constituency.
Indeed, it does seem odd that Crossway
made this decision given that commitment
to a modern translation based on the ever shifting modern critical texts of the
Hebrew OT and Greek NT must necessarily entail an “open translation” philosophy.

Of course, from my perspective, a stable text of the Bible is
indeed essential. What is key, however,
is not a “permanent text” of an English translation but a stable, reliable,
permanent text of the Bible in the original languages (the Hebrew Masoretic
Text of the OT and the Textus Receptus of the NT).

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

I recently stumbled upon a youtube video by a young atheist
apologist named Jaclyn Glenn titled “Disproving
Christianity: Jesus is a Lie”
(posted in 2013). I thought it might be
worthwhile to offer a brief critique.

Her main argument: She
claims that that Christians plagiarized the life of Jesus from myths of various
pagan deities, including:

The Egyptian god Horus,

The Hindu/Indian god Krishna,

And the Persian/Roman god Mithras.

Here are five logical and factual problems with this claim:

1. She does not use primary sources to make
these claims but biased and inaccurate summaries.

She makes reference to only one original source (the Egyptian
Book of the Dead for Horus), and that
in name only with no direct citations. Her
other references are to either her own summaries of these accounts or to those
made by others, all of which are surely hostile to historical Christianity.

For an example of a refutation of Horus/Jesus parallels see
this site.

There is a major difference between pagan mythological accounts
and the Biblical narrative which are rooted in recognizable reality.

Example: She suggests
that Horus also may have experienced a virgin birth. This is how the Wikipedia article on Horus
summarizes the myth of his origin:

Horus was born to the goddess Isis after she retrieved all the
dismembered body parts of her murdered husband Osiris, except his penis, which
was thrown into the Nile and eaten by acatfish,or sometimes by a crab, and
according toPlutarch’s account
used her magic powers to resurrect Osiris and fashion a goldenphallusto conceive her son (older Egyptian
accounts have the penis of Osiris surviving).

Once
Isis knew she was pregnant with Horus, she fled to theNile Deltamarshlands to hide from her brother
Set, who jealously killed Osiris and who she knew would want to kill their son. There Isis bore a divine son, Horus.

This is hardly comparable
to the virginal conception in the historical Biblical narratives of Matthew 1-2
and Luke 1-2.

2. She makes the unsubstantiated claim that the
wide circulation of these myths pre-date Christianity.

In fact, though there were pre-Christian myths of various
deities, those in the Western world did not come to know many of them until
they were written about by Greek and Roman authors. Example: Those in the Greco-Roman world would
most likely have come to know about Horus not by reading the Egyptian Book of the Dead but by reading Plutarch’s
retelling of the Isis, Osiris, Horus myth in his Moralia. Plutarch lived from c. 40-120 AD. Those in the larger Greco-Roman world might
not have even heard of Horus till long after the Christian movement began and the
NT Gospels had been written.

For a similar problem with supposed parallels between
Christianity and Mithraism, see Ronald H. Nash’s book The Gospel and the Greeks (P&R, 1992, 2003): pp. 133-138. Nash concludes that the major
problem with this theory is “the fact that the timing is all wrong,” since “the
flowering of Mithraism occurred after the close of the NT canon, too late for
it to have influenced the development of first-century Christianity” (p. 137).

3. She ignores the possibility that the
influence may have run in the opposite direction.

Pagan articulation of their divine myth may have been
influenced by the rising popularity of the Christian Gospels.

4. She wrongly assumes that there would have
been a large gap of time between the life of the historical Jesus and the
development of myths borrowed from other religions.

She does not deny the historicity of the life of Jesus. But she does not acknowledge that the Gospels
and other Christian writings were written soon after his life, that they share
in wide agreement about the basic facts of Jesus’ life across multiple sources,
and that contemporary eyewitnesses might easily have challenged anything that was
inaccurate.

5. It does not make sense to posit that
monotheistic Jewish Christians would have borrowed from polytheistic pagan myth
to enhance the story of Jesus.

For Israelite hostility to paganism read Isaiah’s attack on
idolatry in Isaiah 44 or the Psalmist’s in Psalm 115. Then read about Paul’s visit to pagan Athens
in Acts 17.

Conclusion: You may embrace or reject the Gospel accounts
of the life of Jesus but to claim that they have their origin in pagan myths is
illogical and historically inaccurate.

Friday, September 23, 2016

Note: Devotion taken from last
Sunday morning’s sermon on Hebrews 13:17-19.

“Pray for us” (Hebrews 13:18a).

In
addition to obedience and submission to those who have the rule over them
(Hebrews 13:17), the inspired author adds in v. 18 another duty which God’s
people have toward their spiritual leaders.
They are to pray for them.
Pastors and elders need the prayers of God’s people. We need your prayers, because we are often on
the frontlines of spiritual warfare. We
are often under attack. Satan likes
nothing better than to discourage a man who is in the ministry or to try to
remove him from his office and calling.
Just as in battle one force will attempt to take out the officers to
demoralize the troops and take away their coordination and leadership, so our
enemy loves to attack and discourage the elders.

In
1605 the English Puritan pastor Williams Perkins wrote a booklet titled “The
Calling of the Ministry” (reprinted by Banner of Truth in the Puritan paperback
titled The Art of Prophesying). One
chapter is titled, “The Scarcity of True Ministers.” In it Perkins ponders why so few men in his
own day seemed to be called to or qualified for the ministry. He gave three reasons:

First, the contempt with which
the calling is treated. It is always
hated by wicked and irreverent men because it reveals their filthiness and
unmasks their hypocrisy. The teaching of
ministers is often a fretting corrosive on their conscience, preventing them
from weltering and wallowing quietly in their sins—as they would be able to do
under other circumstances. This is why
they spurn both the calling of ministers and ministers themselves. They watch them carefully to latch onto their
smallest failures, hoping to disgrace them.
They imagine that by casting contempt on the calling of the preacher
they can remove the shame from their own degraded ways.

It is inevitable that they
should hate those who are called to the ministry, since they harbor deadly
hatred both for the law and the gospel message which they bring, and for the
God whose representatives they are…..

The second reason is the
difficulty of discharging the duties of a minister’s calling. To stand in God’s presence, to enter into the
holy of holies, to go between God and his people, to be God’s mouth to his
people, and the people’s to God … to take the care and charge of souls—these
considerations overwhelm the consciences of men who approach the sacred seat of
the preacher with reverence and not with rashness…..

The third and last reason is
especially relevant to ministry in the NT era, namely the inadequacy of the
financial recompense and status given to those who enter this calling….. (in The Art of Prophesying, pp. 94-95).

A few
years ago I went to an office building to take care of some business. When the man at the counter found out I was
in the ministry, his face became very grave and serious, and he told me, almost
through tears, that he had once been in the ministry. He did not have to say much more, because I
understood. Indeed, I have met many men
who used to be in the ministry. Some no
doubt left because they were not called.
But some have left through grief and discouragement. Perhaps they lacked the prayers of God’s
people to uphold them.

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

I just finished T. S. Eliot’s essay “The Idea of a
Christian Society.” It includes a broadcast talk Eliot did in 1937 as an
Appendix. His closing thoughts in the
talk on “machinery,” society, and man’s end, brought to mind how this might be
applied to contemporary technological advancements (e.g., the internet, etc.).

Any machinery, however
beautiful to look at and however wonderful a product of brains and skill, can
be used for bad purposes as well as good:
and this is as true of social machinery as of constructions of
steel. I think that, more important than
the invention of a new machine, is the creation of a temper of mind in people
such that they can learn to use a new machine rightly. More important still at the moment would be the
diffusion of knowledge of what is wrong—morally wrong—and of why it is wrong. We are all dissatisfied with the way in which
the world is conducted: some believe it
is a misconduct in which we all have some complicity; some believe that if we
trust ourselves entirely to politics, sociology or economics we shall only
shuffle from one makeshift to another. And
here is the perpetual message to the Church:
to affirm, to teach and apply, true theology. We cannot be satisfied to be Christians at
our devotions and merely secular reformers all the rest of the week, for there
is one question that we need to ask ourselves every day and about whatever
business. The Church has perpetually to
answer this question: to what purpose were we born? What is the end of Man?

Monday, September 19, 2016

I’ve been on a recent binge of reading essays. Over the past few months I read two
collections of essays from Joseph Epstein (A
Literary Education and Essays in
Biography).Last week I finished
reading George Orwell, A Collection of
Essays (Harvest Books, 1981).

The Orwell book includes 14 essays of varying length, on
sundry topics, and from various times in his life. They include everything from his vivid and
sometimes chilling memories of childhood in an English boarding school under
the watch of cruel and sadistic caregivers (“Such, Such Were the Joys . . .”)
to his reflections on the life and writings of famous men, like Dickens,
Kipling, and Ghandi (“Charles Dickens,” “Rudyard Kipling,” “Reflections on
Ghandi”) and his reflections on his various personal experiences. These include his musings on British imperialism
drawn from his time as a policeman in Burma (in “Shooting an Elephant”), on his
volunteer service in the Spanish Civil War fighting fascism (“Looking Back on
the Spanish War”), and his assessment of English patriotism (“England Your
England”). It also includes essays on
British popular art and literature (in “The Art of Donald McGill,” “Raffles and
Miss Blandish,” and “Boys’ Weeklies”) and his classic essays on writing (“Politics
and the English Language” and “Why I Write”).

Orwell is a master essayist.
What makes his writing so interesting and inviting? Here are at least three reasons:

First, he is a master of the opening line. Here are a few examples:

Saints should always be judged guilty
until they are proved innocent, but the tests that have to be applied to them
are not, of course, the same in all cases (“Reflections on Ghandi”).

As the corpse went past the flies
left the restaurant table in a cloud and rushed after it, but they came back a
few minutes later (“Marrakech”).

From a very early age, perhaps the
age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer (“Why I
Write”).

Second, he is a master of the arresting observation or
statement. Examples:

All art is propaganda. Neither Dickens himself nor the majority of
Victorian novelists would have thought of denying this. On the other hand, not all propaganda is art
(“Charles Dickens” p. 90).

When one says that a writer is
fashionable one practically always means that he is admired by people under
thirty (“Inside the Whale” p. 221).

So much of left-wing thought is a
kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that the fire is hot (“Inside
the Whale” p. 239).

The novel is practically a Protestant
form of art; it is a product of the free mind, the autonomous individual (“Inside
the Whale” p. 241).

[England] resembles a family, a
rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all
its cupboards bursting with skeletons (“England Your England” p. 267).

Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain than journalists, though less interested in money (“Why
I Write” p. 312).

The opinion that art should have
nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude (“Why I Write” p.
313).

All writers are vain, selfish, and
lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery (“Why I
Write” p. 316).

Third, he is an independent thinker and forthright writer. He was a socialist who criticized his fellow contemporary
liberals who failed to denounce Stalinism (see 1984 and Animal Farm). He surprises by showing some begrudging
admiration for the imperialist Kipling (“Rudyard Kipling”) and raising
questions about the motivations of Ghandi (“Reflections on Ghandi”). While Marxists might denounce Dickens for his
“bourgeois morality” Orwell praises him as “a nineteenth century liberal, a
free intelligence (“Charles Dickens” pp. 103-104). Edgar Allen Poe’s outlook, on the other hand,
“is at best a wild romanticism and at worst is not far from being insane in the
literal clinical sense” (“Inside the Whale” p. 246). Though clearly not a believer, one picks up
on currents of respect for religion, especially Christianity and its influences
for good in society, in Orwell. One
example: In his description of a “certain
cultural unity” that existed in the England of his day, he observes: “All through the Christian ages, and
especially since the French Revolution, the Western world had been haunted by
the idea of freedom and equality; it is only an idea, but it has penetrated all
ranks of society” (“Charles Dickens” p. 103).
One might call Orwell a conservative liberal, a religious unbeliever. Whatever one’s convictions, he inspires
clearer thinking and better writing.

Some will say they want to be simple
Biblicists, free from a systematic approach.
Some will denounce all so-called “man-made” systems. They declare they want, “No creed but Christ,
no book but the Bible.”

These overlook several important facts:

First, human beings have a tendency to think
in orderly ways. This is the way God has
made us. We are “meaning-makers.” Our desire to see things in an orderly way
reflects the fact that we were made in the image of a consistent and orderly
God (see 1 Cor 14:33). Though our reason
has been tainted by sin (total depravity) we retain a rational capacity. A confession of faith, rightly used, is not
an attempt to impose a system on Scripture but to make sense of or to
systematize what Scripture teaches.

Second, those who dismiss all systemic
approaches to Scripture also dismiss the fact that God intended the Scriptures
to be clearly understood by those who read them. Rejection of creeds and confessions is a
rejection of the doctrine of the perspicuity (clarity) of Scripture.

Those who denounce efforts at a systematic
and meaningful approach Scripture have the burden of explaining why God is more
glorified by disorganized and contradictory thinking than by organized and
harmonious thinking. Many of those who
denounce clearly defined systems are in fact operating with highly developed
systematic doctrinal interpretations that are merely left unspoken and
unwritten. Their problem with a
confession like the 1689 is not with the fact that it is a human interpretation
of Scripture but that it contradicts their own human interpretation of
Scripture.

The man who has no creed has no
belief; which is to say the same thing as an unbeliever; and he whose belief is
not formed into a system has only a few loose, unconnected thoughts, without
entering into the harmony and glory of the gospel. Every well-informed and consistent believer,
therefore, must have a creed—a system which he supposes to contain the leading
principles of Divine revelation (“Creeds and Subscriptions,” in The
Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, Vol. 3 [Sprinkle Publications,
1988]: p. 449).

Monday, September 12, 2016

I posted to academia.edu my book review of David Alan Black, Why Four Gospels? The Historical Origins of the Gospels, Second Edition (Energion, 2010): 106pp. The review appeared in Puritan Reformed Journal, Vol. 6, No. 1 (January 2014): pp. 288-291.

Friday, September 09, 2016

We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to
eat (Hebrews 13:10).

For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come (Hebrews 13:14).

In v.
10 the inspired author declares, “We have an altar….” What did he means by this? Why does he say it? I think we have to imagine there were Jewish
apologists who were working on these Jewish Christians to attempt to have them deny
Christ and return to their old religion.
In this way, they would have been anti-evangelists. Of course, no one who is ever truly converted
will ultimately fall away (cf. John 10:27-29; Rom 8:38-39; Phil 1:6).

So,
perhaps these Jewish apologists were saying: "Look, we have the temple. It sits
there as a tangible object in the city of Jerusalem. And we have an altar upon which sacrifices
are offered for our sins."

Perhaps
they added: “We have our holy days. We have the Day of Atonement. We have the Passover. We have the Pentecost. We have the Feast of Booths. And what do you Christians have? All you Christians have is your memory of
Jesus dying a shameful death on the cross.
All you have is your preaching about his supposed resurrection. All you have is your hope that he will one
day come again. We,
on the other hand, have real religious objects, real holy days, real rituals to
perform so you can outwardly see our religion.”

As I
read this I thought of the news that this weekend the Roman Catholic church
will announce that Mother Theresa is now a "saint" (an unbiblical concept since
all Christians are saints; you are made one of the saints the moment you are
converted—you do not have to wait for church approval!). I heard a news report of two persons who
claim to have been healed after they prayed to Mother Theresa (another
unbiblical concept since prayer is directed to God alone and needs no merely
human mediator). The desire to have a
saint, like the desire to have a physical altar is a desire to have the
visible, the physical, the tangible. But
it sets up an idol. This is why the
second commandment forbade graven images.
The danger is that one might focus on the object rather than upon the
Lord himself. This comes from Christ not
being enough, but of needing more.

But
listen as the inspired author says, “We [Christians] have an altar…” What did he mean? Did the early Christians have a physical
altar stashed away somewhere? No, he is
talking about Christ. The altar was the
place where the offerings were laid.
What he is saying is that in Christ an offering was made for our sin
once for all. Christ is our altar! He says this in much the same way that Paul
in 1 Corinthians 5:7 says, “For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for
us.” I can imagine someone asking
Paul: “Hey, Paul, why do you Christians
no longer celebrate the Passover?” And I
hear Paul saying: “We have a
Passover. Our Passover is Christ.”

The inspired
author later adds: “For we have no
continuing city, but we seek one to come” (v. 14).

This takes us
back to Father Abraham and mother Sarah in the faith hall of fame (see
11:13-16). Like them, we too are
homeless. We are ex-pats. We are men without a country. We are living away from our true land. But we are seeking it. And one day it is coming to us. Till then we must stand with Christ and
persevere.

So, we are
always confident, always cheerful, always glad in Christ, never flagging in
zeal. So, we will not drop out. We will not give up. We do not have a physical temple. But we have something better, something more
beautiful in its sheer simplicity and truth.
We have an altar: The Lord Jesus
Christ. He died for us. He was raised for us. He lives for us. He is coming again for us.

Wednesday, September 07, 2016

When time has allowed, I've been binge listening to the Hoover Institute's "The Classicist" podcast. It features interviews with classics scholar and military historian Victor Davis Hanson. I read his Why the West Has Won and Bonfire of the Humanities(coauthored with John Heath and Bruce Thornton) over the last year and am working my way now through Fields Without Dreams: Defending the Agrarian Idea, the memoir of his experiences on his family's multi-generational California raisin farm. Hanson can speak authoritatively about Thucydides, the Trojan War, and the Roman Republic and then sagaciously apply it to contemporary politics and culture. Good listening.

Tuesday, September 06, 2016

My three oldest met up in London at summer's end (coming from Ukraine and Virginia). The Virginians lost their luggage on the return trip. It just showed up last week. So, I got my souvenir from the British Museum: an insulated tumbler with replication lettering from the Rosetta Stone. I then got to fill my tumbler this morning with some coffee the Clarks gave me last week when they got back from their summer ministry in Guatemala. Nice!

Monday, September 05, 2016

Note: A stock part of the NT class I regularly
teach is discussion on the views on slavery in the ancient world and in early
Christianity. I usually stress the
pre-Christian “natural slave theory” of Aristotle, who offered the well known
observation, rightly much offensive to modern ears, that slaves were mere
“talking tools.” I then contrast this
with the more egalitarian views of early Christianity, as reflected in places
like the household codes (cf. Eph 5-6; Col 3) and in Galatians 3:28. I also
stress that although early Christianity was not a social revolutionary movement
and did not advocate the immediate overthrow of slavery (cf. Paul’s views in 1
Cor 7:20-24 and, especially in Philemon), it did contain within it the seed
that led to the flowering of abolition, at least in the West (cf. already the
denunciation of “menstealers” in 1 Tim 1:10 and of those who traffic in
“slaves, and souls of men” in Rev 18:13).

To learn more, I recently read Peter Garnsey’s book Ideas of Slavery from
Aristotle to Augustine. Garnsey’s work is
noteworthy for pointing out criticisms and challenges to slavery even in the
pre-Christian world. He also makes some
interesting parallels to the defense of slavery in the ancient world and in the
antebellum American South (including the appeal of some pro-slavery Southern intellectuals
to classical thinkers, like Aristotle). Oddly
enough, Garnsey finds less to affirm in the role of early Christianity in opposing
slavery. For him it is a mixed bag. Though he notes the views of Gregory of Nyssa in
opposing slavery, he places emphasis on the more status quo affirming views of Augustine
and others. Garnsey seems to ignore the obvious, however, that
the rise of Christianity eventually led to the decline of slavery in every culture
where it had influence.

This book is a revised and extended edition of Garnsey’s 1995
Stanford lectures at Trinity College, Dublin.
As the title indicates it provides a survey of views on slavery in the
classical world, from the ancient Greeks to early Christianity. He suggests there have been few “slave
societies” like that found in ancient Greece and Rome or in antebellum
America. Along the way he has some
interesting comparisons between ancient justifications of slavery and
pro-slavery views in the American South.
Though admitting there was no true abolition movement in the ancient
world, he makes the case that there was criticism and critique of slavery in
the ancient world.

Content:

Introduction (pp.
1-22):

The author makes clear his disdain for slavery: “Slavery is the most degrading and
exploitative institution invented by man” (p. 5).

He says slavery was not universal in the ancient world or the
“typical labor system in the ancient Mediterranean world” but admits it cannot
be dismissed as “marginal” (p. 5).

Slavery was a “structural element” in ancient society (p. 9).

He cites R. W. Fogel, Without
Consent or Contract: the Rise and Fall
of American Slavery (1989, p. 201):

For 3,000 years—from the time of
Moses to the end of the 17th century—virtually every major
statesman, philosopher, theologian, writer, and critic accepted the existence
and legitimacy of slavery. The word
‘accepted’ is chosen deliberately, for these men of affairs and molders of
thought neither excused, condoned, pardoned, nor forgave the institution. They did not have to; they were not burdened
by the view that slavery was wrong.
Slavery was considered to be part of the natural scheme of things. ‘From the hour of their birth,’ said
Aristotle, ‘some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.’ (p. 9).

Ancient views of slavery cannot be limited to the “natural
slave theory” of Aristotle (p. 13).
Slavery also came to have metaphorical use among early Christians.

Part I: Attitudes to Slavery (pp. 23-102):

Chapter 2: Slavery
accepted (pp. 23-34):

Garnsey points not just to Plato and Aristotle acceptance of
slavery but also others, including early Christians. He points to the sermons of Augustine and
John Chrysostom which presume the existence of the slave system. He also cites the will of Gregory of
Nazianzus, showing he had been a slave owner.

Chapter 3:
Justifications of slavery (pp. 35-52).

He notes Aristotle’s “natural slave theory” in which he
expressed the view that some men by nature were meant to be enslaved and controlled
by superior men as their masters. Again,
he points to other ancients, including some early Christian writers, who
reflected this viewpoint.

Chapter 4: Slave
systems criticized (pp. 53-63).

Chapter opens:

A number of authors find fault with
the slave system as it operated in practice, including the way slaves were
treated, and with certain aspects of slave acquisition. The criticisms that are leveled are concrete
and raise practical concerns. They are
limited in objective and do not question the existence of slavery as an
institution. Hence they have to carefully
distinguished from what appear to be genuine critiques of slavery (see ch. 6)
(p. 53).

Chapter 5: Fair words
(pp. 64-74).

This chapter addresses the labeling of slaves “as inherently
bad or stupid (cf. ‘Sambo’)” as “the crudest way of justifying the institution”
(p. 74).

Chapter 6: Slavery
criticized (pp. 75-86).

He cites examples of largely anonymous critics of slavery
(cited as opponents by men like Aristotle) who attacked slavery. These were “social radicals” (p. 86).

Among Christian writers Gregory of Nyssa stands out for his
arguments for the abolition of slavery (pp. 80-85).

Chapter 7: Slavery
eased (pp. 87-101).

This chapter deals with how slaves were treated in the ancient world.

Garnsey argues that with the rise of Christianity to imperil
power “we find very little sign of change in the law of slavery and the way it
was administered” (p. 101).

Part II: Theories of Slavery (pp. 103-243):

Section 1: Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman
philosophers

Chapter 8: Aristotle
(pp. 107-127).

Opening: “Natural
slavery as presented by Aristotle is a battered shipwreck of a theory” (p.
107).

He addresses Aristotle’s assessment that slaves are “tools”
used by their masters (p. 122). He saw
slaves as “subhuman” (p. 124).

Chapter 9: The Stoics
(pp. 128-152).

“The contribution of Stoicism to slave theory was to shift
the focus of attention from legal to moral slavery” (p. 150). Stoicism believed in the rationality of all
men (including slaves) and was deterministic. “The message for slaves, explicit
in the Late Stoics, was to stay put and serve their masters well. Therein lay moral goodness, and therefore
happiness” (p. 151).

Section 2: Early theologians

Chapter 10: Philo (pp.
157-172).

Philo reflected stoic influence in distinguishing physical
from moral slavery. He wrote a work
titled “Every Good Man is Free” another (lost) “Every Bad Man is a Slave.”

Chapter 11: Paul (pp.
173-188).

He sees Paul as like Stoics and Philo in adopting a moral
view of slavery.

“Perhaps Paul’s outlook was no better integrated and no more
internally consistent than that of Philo” (p. 188).

Section 3: Church Fathers

Chapter 12: Ambrose (pp. 191-205).

Ambrose reflects classical views but begins to look at the
origins of slavery in sin.

Chapter 13: Augustine
(pp. 206-219).

“In response to the ubiquity of institutional slavery and the
inevitability of spiritual slavery of one kind or another, Augustine produced,
on the one hand, a moral theology of slavery, or pastoral advice about the way
masters and slaves should comport themselves in relation to one another, and,
on the other, a dogmatic theology of slavery, or a theoretical statement about
the place of slavery in the divine order” (p. 206).

He sees the origin of sin in man’s fallen nature.

Chapter 14: Slavery as
metaphor (pp. 220-235).

Christians used slave metaphor for spiritual purposes. The “two worlds” of their theology and
Greco-Roman society “seem to me to have intersected surprisingly little” (p.
235).

Saturday, September 03, 2016

In March 1939, on the eve of the outbreak of the Second World
War, T. S. Eliot gave three lectures at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,
later published as the essay “The Idea of a Christian Society.”

In the opening chapter of the essay, Eliot offers this
description of religious liberalism:

In religion, Liberalism
may be characterized as a progressive discarding of elements in historical
Christianity which appear superfluous or obsolete, confounded with practices
and abuses which are legitimate objects of attack. But as its movement is controlled rather by
its origin than by any goal, it loses force after a series of rejections, and
with nothing to destroy is left with nothing to uphold and nowhere to go.

Friday, September 02, 2016

Remember those who rule over you, who have spoken
the word of God to you, whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct (Hebrews 13:7).

We begin with a command: “Remember (the verb mnemoneuo: to remember, to
be mindful of, to call to mind, to think of, to hold in memory, to keep in
mind) them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of
God” (v. 7a). Some interpreters have
suggested that this refers to remembering leaders who had died, perhaps as
martyrs. But it might also refer simply to
keeping in mind leaders of both past and present. One interpreter adds: “It apparently required some effort for the
Hebrews to respect their former leaders [he assumes they are dead], for
otherwise the exhortation would not have been necessary” (Guthrie, p. 270).

There is something that might be jarring about this command
for those of us living in our modern egalitarian, personal freedom culture. This is hierarchical language. The phrase “them which are over you” is from
the Greek verb hegeomai. It refers to those in leadership, those with
authority to command and rule. This verb is the root for the English word
“hegemony”: rule or dominance of one
over another. This English term has a
negative connotation that the Greek word does not.

Is it talking about civil rulers? No.
Clearly the reference here is to spiritual leaders, to church officers,
and especially to the elders. Why? Because they are the teachers, those “who
have spoken unto you the word of God.”
The elders must be “apt to teach (cf. 1 Tim 3:2). They are those who are
able “by sound doctrine” to exhort and convince (Titus 1:9). The elders do not bear the sword, like the
civil magistrate (cf. Romans 13:4).
Their only “weapon” is the word of God and their own words as they
exposit the Scriptures.

Hebrews
and the rest of the NT assume that Christians will be in churches where there
will be officers whose duty and responsibility it is to teach the word of God
and to exercise spiritual rule (cf. 1 Corinthians 16:15-16; 1 Thessalonians
5:12-13; Hebrews 13:17, 24).

Now,
this rule is not like secular rule. It
is not tyrannical rule. It is not authoritarian but authoritative. Consider Peter’s exhortation that the elders
not be “lords over God’s heritage” but “ensamples to the flock” (1 Peter
5:1-3).

That
same theme is struck in Hebrews 13:7b:
“whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.” The
verb rendered as “follow” is mimeo
from which we get “mimic” and “mimeograph.” The phrase could literally be rendered as
“imitate their faith.”

This
is another very Pauline sounding exhortation.
In 1 Corinthians 11:1 Paul exhorts, “Be ye followers [noun: mimetes]
of me, even as I also am of Christ” (cf. 1 Corinthians 4:6; 2
Thessalonians 3:7-9).

The
Christian faith is taught but it is
also caught. It is taken in through the mind and heart by
teaching. And it is taken in through the
ear and the eyes through watching and listening to examples.

So,
the inspired author adds, “considering the end [ekbasis: the outcome, the
result] of their conversation [anastrophe: manner of life, conduct, deportment]” (v. 7).

This
is why when Paul lists the qualifications for an overseer (elder or pastor) in 1
Timothy 3 there is so much stress on his life and the life of his family (1
Timothy 3:1-7). Does he manage his own
life and his own household well? Does he
have a good relationship with his wife and children? Are his children obedient? In this way being an elder is like being a politician. Not only does he have this calling but so
does his family.

The
key thing is that he be a model in his faith, in his fundamental trust and
confidence in the Lord.

Here
is the application: To be faithful to
the word of God means, in part, submitting yourself to the oversight and
shepherding of a local, visible church wherein there are elders who labor in
teaching and exhortation and who provide living examples of men who are
attempting, albeit always imperfectly but not with egregious failings, to live
out the Christian life before the body.

Every
Christian should be part of such a church and every church should have such elders
who teach the word and offer Christ-like rule within the body.

Consider
Spurgeon’s Baptist catechism:

Q.
79: What is the duty of such as are
rightly baptized?

A: It is the duty of such as are
righty baptized, to give up themselves to some particular and orderly Church of
Jesus Christ, that they may walk in all the commandments and ordinances of the
Lord blameless.